Re: [Audacity-quality] Beat Finder (was Re: bugs in 'Click Removal')

[Steve t. F. <ste...@gm...>]

On 18 December 2013 21:58, Gale Andrews <ga...@au...> wrote:
>
> | From Steve the Fiddle <ste...@gm...>
> | Wed, 18 Dec 2013 01:23:10 +0000
> | Subject: [Audacity-quality] Beat Finder (was Re: bugs in 'Click Removal')
>>> On 17 December 2013 23:57, Vaughan Johnson <va...@au...> wrote:
> [...]
>> > Remove Beat Finder in the meantime? Is it that weak?
>>
>> It works well when applied to a drum track.
>> Virtually perfect with synthetic tests such as marking the beats of a
>> click track.
>> Less well for complex music.
>> Useless for music that does not have a strong beat.
>>
>> Currently it only looks for low frequency impulses, which works for
>> picking out the kick drum in a drum track but is prone to being lost
>> in a full mix. A relatively simple change of providing an adjustable
>> filter rather than the current fixed filter can produce significant
>> improvement with some audio tracks.
>>
>> One of the main difficulties for improving this type of effect is the
>> large amount of testing with a variety of source material that is
>> required.
>>
>> The (open source) program Mixxx seems to have beat detection nailed. I
>> think they use the vamp beat tracker plug-in.
>
> I've got the "Aubio Beat Tracker: Beats" which is a VAMP plug-in
> and significantly better than our Beat Finder. Is that the one you
> mean? It has "Peak Picker Threshold", "Silence Threshold" then
> a menu choice for the algorithm. Not too hard to use.

I've not checked which is used in Mixxx, but I've recently tried
"INESC Porto Beat Tracking plugin" from here:
http://vamp-plugins.org/download.html
There is a slight problem that it always puts the labels starting at
time=0 even when the selection does not start at 0, but as long as the
selection starts at time = 0 it is quite impressive. Needless to say,
much more effective than our current beat finder.

Steve

>
> Even on a track with a clearly defined beat, I find Beat Finder too
> often gets it right for several bars, then in the next bars there will
> be two labels on the first beat then no labels for another couple of
> beats. I've often seen it stop labelling when the vocal stops or the
> strings come in but the beat continues.
>
> I'm still OK with removing Beat Finder, especially if our announcement
> of removing it can suggest something better.
>
>
>
> Gale